🌸 Emily’s tasks journal

Life
21

i get what you mean, but reading this doesn’t feel wrong. all sorts of people are scared or afraid of all sorts of things. i don’t think this has anything to do with competence or logic.

22

i don’t think this has anything to do with competence or logic.

Yeah. Usually I can’t convince myself by using logic tho. I can agree with you, but I don’t “feel” it. I think it’s been changing slowly (I mean convincing myself with logic) but I’m not sure.

I remembered that I promised updates on routines every Sunday. I was hanging out with ppl on Sunday so here’s the update today instead:

  1. :green_circle: Laundry on Wed and Sat: still going well, easy to do.
  2. :green_circle: Cleaning on Sun: skipped this Sunday but it’s ok; if I skip a few more times it’ll be concerning.
  3. :yellow_circle: Writing about indecision decisions: I don’t often have something new to write. Perhaps this shouldn’t be a “routine”.
  4. :yellow_circle: Writing about routines every Sunday: can’t say it’s green because not enough time has passed.
  5. :red_circle: Breakfast every day after shower: not going well. I don’t have a reliable supply of breakfast food, and also I don’t have that much time in the morning if we count 1.5h of [random getting ready].
  6. :question: Look at my other-work-laptop every day: might be fixed by taking it to work every day, we’ll see.
  7. :x: Update SSL certs every month: I feel anxious just thinking about it. I might start doing it if I do it once, though, and record how I did it. (Bad memory.)
  8. :x: Shop for groceries every week: I ran out of money again so I dunno. Although I have some cash, so this objection doesn’t apply. Anyway, “I might start doing it if I do it once” applies here as well.
  9. :x: Lunch & dinner at specific times: not even going to think about it for now.

I just made tasks for “do at least once” for (7 8).

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23

:yellow_circle: Jun 13

No anxiety, but also no icky tasks done. Went to sleep late the previous night, had no energy today after work, took a nap.

Taking both laptops to the office worked well.

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24

:yellow_circle: Jun 14

No anxiety (I think?), but also no icky tasks done. Although I did go to a store that I probably would’ve otherwise forgotten to go to. I think the Today notebook partly helped.

(“Today notebook” = the notebook system I described. I write down a task when I want to do it. I only add a task from one of the previous days to the current day, when I still want to do it.)

:radio_button: Jun 15

:yellow_circle: Jun 16

No anxiety, no icky tasks. Only small tasks but I don’t mind.

Some reflection

I think I simultaneously gain a bit more capacity to do icky tasks, and more tasks become non-icky. This is easy to see at work: I went to IT support once and now I don’t mind going there again. I pinged my team lead once and now I don’t mind doing it again. Sometimes works in life as well (I mentioned sex once and now I can mention it again).

So overall I’m probably improving faster than I would think just by looking at the task list.

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25

Some more reflection on unproductive mornings

Today I had energy in the morning to do something useful, I think – but instead I renamed some contacts in the phone address book and did.. nothing else probably.

I think that I could’ve done at least one semi-icky task, which is a bigger deal than it seems.

For example, “go buy groceries” or “stash in-progress WOC codebase changes so that I can work on smaller things” would’ve both been useful.

I think I like doing tasks. It’s the “starting” that feels icky to me. And also forgetting “what did I want to do next?” in the middle of the task.

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26

Some more reflection after going through the voice recorder backlog

Today I sat down and pushed the rest of my “voice recorder management” app to GitHub: GitHub - neongreen/memos: Transcribe & handle voice memos.

Pushing it helped me start working on new features, like “Add to Things” (a todo app). Which turned out to be very easy to implement.

After going through the voice recorder backlog of ~300 entries, I realized a few things.

The desire for a paper trail

It’s vaguely unpleasant to do something without leaving a paper trail.

  • I don’t want to “cook soup at least once in my life”. I also want to have a Notion entry saying that “FIRST TIME | <date> | Cooked soup | <Result>”. Somehow I don’t see the value in “just” doing something.

  • Or I wouldn’t want to “just” remember that I should nudge couchsurfers to buy a cheap SIM-card to make my life as a host easier. I would ideally want to make a checklist for hosting people.

  • It applies to some things that are less memory-mediated perhaps. I wouldn’t want to “just” know where to buy carrot bread in Warsaw. I WANT TO BE MAINTAINING A HUGE DATABASE OF WHERE TO BUY ANYTHING IN WARSAW. Typing this feels a bit ridiculous.

  • I accidentally saw that a while ago I gave some kids a lecture about how Bitcoin works. Which I entirely forgot about by now. And I also felt this tinge of “I should make a database of all talks I gave in my life”.

Is this relatable at all? I haven’t seen people describe it before. I always though it was just my thing.

Update: right now I was doing a task “look up how schnitzel is made”. I thought I would feel meh about not writing it down. But then I repeated the steps out loud and actually remembered/internalized them, and now I don’t feel bad about it anymore. …Except that now I feel bad that I will forget the “remembering/internalizing” trick later. I want a hug.

Update 2: perhaps I should google a book on how to live with bad memory.

Update 3: after googling, perhaps I should go to a psychiatrist/GP and ask for help with bad memory. Maybe it’s an ADHD thing. Maybe it’s a physical thing / a symptom of something.

Update 4: but I remember how schnitzel is made. This is very surprising. Maybe I don’t have bad memory, but rather I don’t make an effort to remember things..?

Agile

Voice recorder = random jiras. The Things app = groomed backlog; things with clear requirements. The Today notebooks = jiras that are good enough that they were actually picked for a “sprint”.

(This isn’t how I think things “should” work, this is how things already kinda work for me. The connection to Agile was made postfactum.)

How much is my workflow mediated by ADHD and bad memory?

Perhaps other people don’t need to write really small tasks down, because they won’t forget about them. Or perhaps other people don’t get distracted after starting to do something.

Probably a good idea to explicitly go “nah” on some tasks and record why they were nah-d.

I suppose.

Would I have an easier time discarding not particularly interesting tasks if I had goals in life?

Right now I don’t really have goals in life, or at least nothing major that I’m working towards. So I’m okay with looking up things like “ask ChatGPT to output a 10x10 image in hex notation and see if it succeeds”. But I don’t really want to be doing this kind of stuff. I opened ChatGPT and already felt a bit bored.

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27

i don’t personally experience it this extreme, but it’s 100% relatable. having lists of all these things sounds super useful! my memory is not great and i would otherwise forget things. (just yesterday a friend reminded me that she still has a book she borrowed from me years ago, and it took me a while to even remember which book it was, and i’m still surprised i gave it to her—not because i wouldn’t want her to have it, just because i barely remember the book and absolutely don’t remember that we ever talked about it.)

so yes, fully relatable!!

sends over virtual hug

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28

:green_circle: Jun 17

Pushing the voice recorder management app to GitHub was an icky task, and now it’s done.

:green_circle: Jun 18

Inspired by yesterday’s realization that I have to stash unfinished changes in order to develop new features, I sat down in the morning and stashed unfinished WOC changes.

(Which immediately led to spending a few hours upgrading all dependencies. Well, maybe no new features this time. But I can do new features later now.)

Sunday routine status

  • :green_circle: Sunday cleanup: works.
  • :green_circle: Laundry: works.
  • :green_circle: Indecision decisions: not a routine but it works.
  • :green_circle: Writing routine statuses here: works.
  • :yellow_circle: Check the work laptop every week: downgraded from “every day” because I don’t want to carry it to the office every day. So I decided to only check it on Mondays. We’ll see how it goes.
  • :red_circle: Breakfast every day after shower: not even trying.
  • :x: Update SSL certs every month: I no longer feel anxious about it, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.
  • :x: Shop for groceries every week: Also didn’t get around to it yet. Made a reminder to add it to the sprint tomorrow.
  • :x: Lunch & dinner at specific times: Ignoring for now.

A small note

I’d like to have larger goals. “Run a business” as opposed to “get rid of debt”.

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29

A small observation: when I have another person around, I try to distract myself (eg. with Overwatch) from the fact that I’m not interacting with them. And then I don’t do routines/tasks.

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30

That’s cool

cc @narthur who was trying to systemize the LEAN model into a Notion database.

Yes, this is very relatable.

Memory problems

Doctors were not super helpful for me in France, they didn’t care a iota about my memory problems.
(I’ve seen tons of them)

I don’t know how it works in Poland; but I’ll share what I found with you.
(I also probably have some form of autism and an ADHD diagnosis, if that can make stuff relatable for you)

  • getting sleep right is the prerequisite to good memory
  • it’s okay to not remember stuff that doesn’t matter
  • Anki (spaced repetition) can help to remember functional stuff (e.g. how to fix this technical problem that I encounter every two months but don’t care to remember? → just make an Anki flashcard so that you remember how you did it next time)
  • Obsidian helps with that too
  • some compounds improve memory
    • focus enhancers (caffeine, modafinil, ritalin/methylphenidate) → but sleep needs to be right
    • AChEIs (acetylcholinesterase inhibitors) → sleep needs to be right too → most powerful option
    • neurogenesis-inducing compounds (semax, selank, cerebrolysine, cortexine) → can disrupt sleep and have a paradoxal effect
  • if you can get an awesome memory, your urge of noting down everything might disappear
  • your life will vastly improve if you can fix your memory; since it’s most probably a symptom of a an underlying problem. e.g. in your brain, there’s not only episodic memory that’s impacted
  • an reliable way of assessing your episodic memory is to try to remember what you did yesterday and what you did today
  • what kind of memory is going wrong? Is it semantic memory? This might give you clues
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31

A small observation about hyperfocus (?)

At work I was working on two tasks today – one was “testing a PR that I made” and the other was “write a proposal for using feature flags in our codebase”. I almost finished the first one but then switched to the second one and worked on it for an hour.

Now, for some reason, I feel like I don’t want to be going out and meeting people. I want to open my work laptop and finish the first task.

I don’t like it.

(I’m not going to do it. But also I don’t like being in this state.)

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32

This would be really cool.

For the past few years I’ve been operating (unconsciously?) on the assumption that memory isn’t fixable and I and everybody else need notebooks, Notion, WOC, Logseq, wikis, etc.

But maybe sleep can improve it, yeah. And for sure sleep is possible to fix.

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33

i wouldn’t say these are hard contradictions. my go-to person for awesome memory is my flatmate, who easily remembers what he did yesterday or three years ago, or how to get to a restaurant in a foreign country that he visited five years ago and where he hasn’t been since. he still writes shopping lists for our weekly grocery runs, and tends to forget one or two things if he doesn’t look at the list.

this just to say i wouldn’t completely abandon the thought of notebooks etc., but obviously with a better recollection of what you did, the need to write down every little detail should vanish.

(i personally also feel fine not being able to remember everything. my memory definitely could use some improvements, but when prompted or sometimes randomly i remember additional snippets; or i can place some things on a small scale, but not on a large scale, like i remember going to a certain building on vacation with my flatmate, but i might not remember the city exactly.)

just a few scattered thoughts for food… no, wait, that’s not right XP

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34

:radio_button: Jun 19

Nothing got done. I don’t remember why.

:radio_button: Jun 20

Almost nothing got done. I also don’t remember why. Maybe I was hosting a couchsurfer or something.

:green_circle: Jun 21

Groceries! And a small fix in WOC.

:green_circle: Jun 22

Bought shampoos in Lush. Bought toothpaste. Bought a power cord (and I’m enjoying having a second monitor now). Laundry. Half-implemented en passant in https://ches.vercel.app.

:yellow_circle: Jun 23

Doing nothing but implementing Chess Simp challenges in Ches. Hyperfocus.

:green_circle: Jun 24

Submitted a creative works report (needed or else my salary would decrease). Laundry. More work on WOC and on Ches. Contacted my landlord. Wrote in the indecision thread. Three icky tasks overall (!!).

Doing icky tasks feels easier recently. Maybe thanks to caffeine tabs. Having ADHD meds would be good but it’s an icky task of its own.

2 Likes
35

An observation on hyperfocus

I was doing a stream about my chess game (and then debugging the engine) till 4am yesterday. Ignored all tasks that I wanted to do yesterday in the evening, including the clean-up routine and the “writing about routines” routine.

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36

:green_circle: Jun 25

Emailed somebody. Wrote a tasks update. Subscribed to Logseq Sync. Not many things done in the Today notebook, but I’m overall pleased.

Was hyperfocused on Ches but ok.

:yellow_circle: Jun 26

Did some cleaning up. Nothing else got done tho.

:radio_button: Jun 27

No tasks recorded.

:yellow_circle: Jun 28

Fetched new toothbrushes. To wszystko.

:green_circle: Jun 29

Got salary. Paid rent. Paid a bunch of other bills. Scanned my work contract. Tested Logseq Sync (it works starting from 0.9.10). Went to top up my bank card.

Was in a bad mood due to having to pay all those bills, but survived.

:green_circle: Jun 30

Set up my personal computer to have access to work stuff – the work laptop is just so icky to use. I think it’s okay because I’m not going to get any notifications about messages or email at my personal computer anyway. Paid yet another bill.

Observations

  1. I like paper more than computers. Not everything can become paper, but some things (eg. reminders without deadlines, like “did I get this refund?”) definitely can. I’ll try to buy a proper notebook for such things. Having more paper and less computers would be good.

  2. I would find it easier to work with computers if I had an office chair.

  3. By keeping some wiki pages at work, I got new ideas about what style of [page maintenance] works well for me. Will maybe apply the same at home.

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37

Almost not paying any attention to the tasks/routines recently, possibly due to lack of sleep.

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38

:green_circle: Jul 1, Sat

Laundry (good), online shopping (good), a few small tasks (good).

:yellow_circle: Jul 2, Sun

Nothing icky. Some cleaning up.

:radio_button: Jul 3, Mon

No tasks.

:green_circle: Jul 4, Tue

Paid for B2.

:yellow_circle: Jul 5, Wed

Almost nothing.

:red_circle: Jul 6, Thu

Paid a longstanding debt. Almost no money now. Was feeling anxious IIRC.

:yellow_circle: Jul 7, Fri

Nothing?

Observations

  1. In the past few days I gave up on all non-work things. Not sure why. No money? Bad sleep? Likely both.

  2. However, today I’m having a productive day so far, although I feel that I might not get anything “serious” done (ie. anything that has been lingering for a while, so not really “serious” but more like “icky”.)

  3. FWIW I’m happy that today I could reset the streak of not using the Today journal/notebook.

  4. I think sleep is influencing both my anxiety (b/c sleep->caffeine) and my memory. I’d like to start having better sleep again. I mean, it’s already better insofar as I don’t have insomnia anymore (THANKS, ALARMS), but I haven’t been getting 8h of sleep for a while now.

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39

We got into hyper-focus at the same period of the year; weird?
ADHD unite

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40

:green_circle: Jul 8

Yesterday I did like 20 tasks, including icky ones about accounting.

  • I think I was right to be scared about accounting, because it looks that I’ll be fined €400 for missing the annual report deadline.

    • It’s kinda unsafe to operate a business if you have ADHD, apparently ಠ_ಠ.

    • One more downside is that now I feel guilty/ashamed/regretful/something? as well. Like, if I had read the emails I could’ve saved €400 and bought myself something nice. Maybe I actually feel more angry than ashamed. Or bitter. Maybe I feel all those things at once, I don’t know.

    • It occurred to me yesterday that it doesn’t feel particularly good to lose money and additionally blame myself. Like, I already have a hard time with the brain/life I have, maybe I shouldn’t also get internal blame for that as well.

    • Not sure what to do about it, but generally admitting that I’m not in control of myself wouldn’t hurt. At some level I’m just along for the ride. Possibly at a pretty big level, actually.

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